Can we call the Southern Poverty Law Center a domestic terror group yet? One of their attorneys was arrested and slapped with domestic terror charges, and the group seemingly rationalized the whole event under the umbrella that the organization was caught up doing its duties, promoting the de-escalation of law enforcement tactics against protesters and communities of color. The arrest occurred on Sunday, when left-wing radicals planned a Molotov cocktail attack against the site of a proposed police training facility outside of Atlanta dubbed ‘cop city’ (via Fox News):
A lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was arrested and charged with domestic terrorism over the violence that broke out in Atlanta on Sunday in relation to protests of a planned training facility for police officers in the city, the SPLC has confirmed.
"An employee at the SPLC was arrested while acting — and identifying — as a legal observer on behalf of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG). The employee is an experienced legal observer, and their arrest is not evidence of any crime, but of heavy-handed law enforcement intervention against protesters," the SPLC said in a statement on Monday.
Thomas Webb Jurgens was among the list of 23 suspected domestic terrorists released by the Atlanta Police Department on Monday. Violence broke out in Atlanta on Sunday after protesters of a planned police training facility hurled bricks and Molotov cocktails at officers and set cars on fire.
[…]
Dubbed "Cop City" by its detractors, the planned $90 million training complex for law enforcement officers has been the ire of environmentalists and anti-police activists since 2021 when the Atlanta City Council approved the complex in June of that year.
This isn’t the first time the SPLC has been caught up in a bad public relations disaster. In 2012, the organization’s map, which designated what they considered to be extremist groups, was used as a roadmap by Floyd Lee Corkins back in 2012 to commit the shooting inside the Family Research Council building. An unarmed guard was injured during the assault.